


Life After Credits

by Mr_K_chan



Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovered Memories, Reincarnation, Slice of Life, more tags as I go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-02 15:45:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4065565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_K_chan/pseuds/Mr_K_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after shinigami_yumi's 'If Your God Was Real'. Everyone knows that life isn't like a movie. When the protagonist gets their picture-perfect ending, what happens after the credit reel rolls?</p><p>A fic where Ky attempts to live a normal life while balancing school and two lifetimes' worth of memories and playing sometimes-boyfriends with the prickliest chestnut in existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ky's Life is Normal (or as normal as it could get)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinigami_yumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinigami_yumi/gifts).
  * Inspired by [If Your God Were Real](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3388088) by [shinigami_yumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinigami_yumi/pseuds/shinigami_yumi). 



> Yay! Something GG-related, omg. I'm so scared, someone hold me.
> 
> This was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but guess what? My muses are the laziest bastards in existence, so I'm posting these in bits and pieces. 
> 
> Unbetad, disclaimers. Go check out shinigami_yumi's work; the fic this is based on is better than my shite.
> 
> Someone tell me what I'm doing wrong, please? Kthnxbai. 
> 
> *goes to die in a corner

Ky found living with Sol to be oddly domestic.

The other came and went on a whim, and he was decidedly alone for most of the time, but whenever the older man did stay, the hours spent with him in his small apartment was baffling.

The two of them had fallen into a pattern of sorts: Sol would immediately head for the fridge upon walking through the door for the six-pack now semi-permanently residing in the freezer before heading off to the balcony to either stay out of Ky's hair or wait for him to come home if he was out for the day until it was time to eat. The two of them then talk about their day over bites of whatever was cooking—which usually was just Ky almost-monologuing over Sol's occasional grunts and short replies. Their conversation carries on to the living room when the dishes are done, which would either turn into full-blown bickering or stop completely as Ky does schoolwork. Sometimes, Sol would throw in a hint or two at whatever he was working on, which was a huge help; Sol knew things that he didn't, and it always amazes Ky just how much his older lover actually knew. Most of the time, however, it usually boiled down to Sol lounging at his couch and scoffing at his homework or pestering him until he caved in to the temptation to either smack him or kiss him.

Either choice ends up with the two of them making out in a frenzy on the floor like a couple of hormonal teenagers, which somehow winds up in sex. Whether or not they actually make it to the bedroom is another fight with probability that refuses to resolve itself. Ky refuses to find out; the marks scattered all over his body and the numerous rug burns he had endured over the short time he spent in this crazy whirlwind of a relationship all serve as a reminder that he is better off not knowing.

It isn't as if he doesn't like it; living with the largest, most uninterested house cat in existence probably has more cons than pros, but he's pretty sure he won't have it any other way.

Today was a Saturday, and it was shaping up to be a long weekend. Sol had come down from a hunt and decided to come crash at his place. Ky put up with it after a minimal amount of fuss which includes bullying the older man for his laundry and the requisite amount of words to remind him that he bought him ashtrays and that he should use them when he inevitably goes out onto the balcony for a light.

Ky follows it up with a sharp jab to his shoulder when Sol only started stripping down to his underpants and grunts in response to his tirade.

With Sol lounging in his living room in only his shorts and dinner put away in the oven to cook, Ky begins the process of doing the week's laundry. Separate the whites from colours, then separate according to the type of clothing and material. Delicates get loaded on the washer first, and the appropriate amount of detergent and softener put into the machine before he starts the cycle. Then the colours get separated the same way. It was a chore Ky never minded amongst everything; it was repetitive and almost soothing, and it helped him clear his mind.

He finishes sorting out the rest of the laundry, when his mind drifts back to his odd arrangement. Ky often found himself wondering just how absurdly lucky he was to cross paths with Sol within two lifetimes; God truly has blessed him with the opportunity to meet him again, despite their circumstances.

Ky catches himself thinking this and laughs to himself. There are times he curses the fact that he met Sol, which usually happen whenever the older man aggravates him beyond the point of patience. The mixed feelings he gets afterward make him take it back, however, so he supposes it doesn't exactly help him any.

The blonde leaves his neat piles of laundry to go check on his pork in the oven; the smell has permeated the entire apartment and has filled the kitchen and living room with the scent of cooking meat. Sol had relocated from his couch to his counter, and Ky's eyes narrow at the folder in his hands.

"You better not have done anything to my report, Sol," He says warningly. "If I find that you've put something else in there—"

"Relax, kiddo. I was just reading through it," Sol mumbles, not looking up from where he thumbed through his meticulous notes. Ky feels his blood pressure slowly rising as he thinks about the creases in the pages and the smudged ink. "S'not like it's anything new to me."

"If so, then drop it," He says, slapping his wrist. Sol obliges and lets the folder drop onto the counter. "Instead of poking fun at my work, how about you contribute to this?"

"Pretty sure school reports are supposed to train you to work independently," Sol says with a grin as he leans on his folded arms, and Ky has a sinking feeling that he was staring at his ass as he bent over to fetch the pot roast from the oven. "Can't have people giving you freebies, now, can you?"

"I'm pretty sure if I was dating someone else, they'd be falling over themselves to help me," Ky points out as he sets the pot on a rag. "You just like seeing me squirm, Sol.I thought the perk of dating someone infinitely smarter than you are is exactly for these sort of thing?"

Said man shrugs, looking very unrepentant as Ky sets the table. "C'mon, Kiske. You gotta let me have some measure of fun. Besides, your expressions always crack me up. It's extremely entertaining."

A dishrag finds a home in Sol's face with a wet splat as his younger lover walks past. "Of course you would, you absolute retard. Remind me why I bother keeping you around."

"I keep your heating bill down?" Sol suggests as he tosses the damp rag into the sink. "I'm the only way you can get regular semi-intelligent conversation? The sex is good? I dunno, boy. You tell me."

Ky rolls his eyes in good humour as he takes a seat at the table, Sol immediately sliding into the chair opposite his. "I'd say neither of those choices, but that'd be a lie," he mutters as Sol helps himself. Ky glances up and has to look away from his lover's face to stop himself from outright laughing. "Oh stop. You're a fully-grown man; stop pouting."

Dinner settles into this comfortable silence interspersed with small tidbits of conversation. Ky tells Sol about the notes he gets on his desk, and the brunette snorts. "You are far too pretty for your own good," The American comments. "Must be because you're shiny." Ky only replies with a shake of his head and a poorly-hidden grin.

Ky thinks about his papers piled on the coffee table, but lets it go when Sol's bare foot brushed his ankle. He hides his smile behind a spoonful of roast and holds back his laughter.

All his regular problems could be put on the back burner for a little while; his lover was here, and he wasn't here often enough as he would like. His assignments could wait.


	2. Ky's (Love) Life is like an Action Movie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ky ruminates on his love life, and the ins and outs of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Ufnskidblnaveoms muses suck, 6-day workweek sucks, everything sucks! At least I'm getting money now. XD
> 
> Again, please tell me if there are things that make you cringe. Hugs!

"Captain! There's someone here to see you!"

Ky pulls off his face guard, shaking sweaty hair out of his eyes. He hands his practice foil off to one of the club members with a nod and a smile. "Thank you, Anton. Can you look after everyone and make sure they keep up their forms, please?"

His vice-captain nods, moving to take his place in the gym. Ky takes this moment to take a breath and mentally prepare himself.

Even after nearly a year of doing this, it never got easier.

Ky nods to himself, sighing as he opened the gym's double doors.

'There it is,' he thinks, finding a girl waiting for him outside. She visibly perks up when she sees him, and he puts on his best smile for her as he approaches. 

He stands tall, walking towards her. He watches her fidget as he comes closer, and he is reminded of a particularly skittish woodland creature. Maybe a rabbit. He can't really say.

Ky mentally shakes his head. Sol must be rubbing off on him if he was thinking something rude about the people who keep confessing to him.

He thinks he has gotten this down to an art: listen to what the person had to say, gently let them down, provide reassurance that they can still be his friend, offer a hug or a handkerchief if necessary.

Ky swears he can do it with his eyes closed; he's been doing nearly the same thing ad nauseum in his prior life, after all. 

Again, the result was as he expected. There were tears involved, and he had to do a little extra sweet-talking in order to quell them. A little dab of the handkerchief here, an apologetic smile there, and he sends the girl on her way with a broken heart but lifted spirits. 

Ky inwardly sighs to himself as he walks back into the gym. It was difficult to be the resident heartbreaker when the heartbreaking was done unwillingly, but he'd rather that than keep their hopes up.

 

Sometimes he wonders why he bothers turning them away.

These thoughts come up especially during the in-between moments; times when there was nothing—no news, no sign, not even a hair—just complete radio silence on the other end of the line. It is during these times that Ky curls up in his bed and tries not to feel the looming space of his cozy apartment closing in on him like a vice, agoraphobia only stymied by getting up to do warm-up exercises and meticulous cleaning rituals.

The regimen does wonders for his physique—he feels that he almost has his grip on his magic up to par again, and his apartment was spotless as ever, but his exhausted mind still kept moving round and round in circles long after he collapsed in his bed. He doesn't particularly mind; he remembers twenty-nine hour days and collapsing out cold in a pile of limbs on any available flat surface.

Ky tries hard not to think too much during these long periods, because he also remembers a gruff voice and warm hands either shaking him awake or putting him to bed properly.

It isn't in his style to pine after someone or anyone. Ky had always believed in his independence, and had always strived to avoid depending on others as often as he could. This sudden unconscious need to be with Sol is startling enough that his world tilted on its axis.

 

At least it was never boring, Ky amends as he readied another spell.

Sol had taken to sparring with him whenever he was back from whatever part of the world he had been roaming in. Ky revels in these sessions; Sol was completely disinterested in the notion, but he offered better resistance than training dummies or his regular sparring partners in the school's fencing club. Against Sol, he can go all out, hit as hard as he'd like, go for the throat, play as dirty as he possibly could. The only real downside to it was that Sol gave nearly as good as he got with less than a quarter of actual effort, and it ends up with the younger man on his back more often than he'd like.

Fighting Sol gives him comfort; it reminds him of a simpler time when there was nothing between them but steel and fire and holy lightning, and a fierce, sweet feeling that toes the edges of anger, relief, and friendship.

A backhanded swipe flings Ky's magic projectile away, and he grits his teeth as he made to run in for the kill. These are the times he inwardly curses himself for being so weak, his magic barely enough to even make his older lover flinch as he remembers spells strong enough to topple Megadeath-class Gears and the feel of a blade held strong and confident in the palm of his hand. Now, he was clumsy, feet unsure in every step and the practice sword heavy and cumbersome in his grip.

Sol takes his moment of hesitation as a chance to aim a punch to the side that made him see stars, the blade he used knock out of his weakened grip as his breath left him. The older man tosses his sword down and lights himself a cigarette in the time it takes for him to get his bearings; they were done, his posture says.

Ky gasps as he fights his way to his feet. It was a slow, unsteady process, and lights flickered in his eyes as he rises on shaking knees. A hand grips his upper arm, warm and strong as it helped him up. Ky stumbles into a solid form, and he relaxes.

It was easy to forget that for all the things he was exasperated at Sol with, this man had been a pillar of strength and support for as long as he could remember. The man was subordinate and confidante and friend and comrade, long before it turned into stranger and acquaintance and lover. He looked up to Sol, looked up to his strength and independence and wanted that for himself. He vows to never forget this again, though he isn't sure how he will keep this promise as Sol spat and cursed as a piercing shriek rose over the city. 

It was even odder to find that this gruff man had even a shred of gentleness in him, and it amused Ky to see it in the way Sol's hands curled around his shoulders as he was herded away to a relatively safe distance away from the rising chaos and the press of the thin line of his mouth as the brunet dashed off in the other direction. Ky had put up a token protest, refusing to stay behind in the commotion, but allowed it nonetheless; at the state he was in, he was more of a hindrance than a help.

He laughs to himself as a sudden revelation comes to him the moment the fires flare: he was the damsel in distress in his own love story, and Sol was his unmanageable, angry, perpetually pissed-off knight in shining armour.

Ky snorts at the mental image and shakes his head. Sol may be clean, but he couldn't be bothered to actually polish anything, or wear proper armour for the matter. He himself was hardly delicate, as a spell to the face might prove.

Well, he mused as he sat back to watch the pretty fireworks in the distance. Let Sol be the muscle in this relationship. He was more than content in letting him handle half of the problems between them, anyway. The rest he could handle himself.


	3. Ky's Life is Confusing (Too bad Movies about being Reborn are virtually Non-existent)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ky hates his life, and panic attacks are never fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG. Look at this shit. How.
> 
> Anxiety attacks are bullshit.
> 
> Also, long chapter. I've had a shit day and I'm marginally depressed.

Ky woke up one day feeling very out of sorts.

He blinks sleep away and wonders; why hadn't his alarm gone off? The bells outside were ringing for drills, and he was late. He remembers that today was a weekday…

 _Oh_ , he blinks. That isn't the Headquarters Plaza outside his window.

…That's right. Today was a national holiday.

He scrubs at his face in frustration; damn his mind for forgetting which timeline he was in. Battle drills and war were in a past not quite forgotten, and his present was school and girls and crushing mediocrity. He sighs again, checking his clock. It was just past eight.

He shook himself awake, discomfort pressing at him from all sides; this wasn't his room in the Order, with its plain walls and scant furniture. This was the apartment he rented when he moved out, chosen for its proximity to the city's centre and the view outside his window. 

The young man forces himself to sit up, shaking his head. He imagines the memories clank around his head like an overfilled coin bank stuffed with pennies, and…

And it really does confuse him. He remembers waking up long before dawn breaks over the horizon, to the sight of stacks of documents nearly as tall as he is in orderly piles on his desk, waiting for a brush of his elbow or a wayward gust of air to send it all toppling down. There was a pile on his desk now still, only significantly smaller, less likely to collapse at the slightest touch—comprised of schoolwork instead of the crushing bureaucracy that came with being in command to an entire organisation and war andblood andGearsanddeathand—

Ky is thankful that he was already sitting. He would've fallen down otherwise.

He also doesn't notice that he was hyperventilating until he was, breath coming far too fast and his chest squeezing painfully hard, vice grip around his heart (going flutter flutter like a moth beating against the walls of a glass jar or _one of those insectoid Gears, with wings that beat poison in the air and there are two hundred people dead in that town, faces blotchy purple having suffocated on their own blood and **God**_ —). He hunches over himself, head pressing between his knees and it doesn't do a whit of good because all he has done was suffocate himself more in the blanket that had tangled in his legs some time in the night, and all he breathes in is sweat, fear, the stale scent of his fabric conditioner and cheap cotton sheets—

Dear Lord above give him strength, he can't do this he just can't.

But God listens to fervent prayers, a gentle arm pulling him upright, something pressing against his mouth and nose, and a voice telling him to _breathe just breathe kid follow me that's it you got it_ and the gentle rise and fall of a warm chest at his back. In, out, in, out. He breathes in his own air, crinkling collapse and expansion and it was a paper bag on his face and oh. He gets it.

"Finally calmed down?" The voice says again, and he feels it just as much as he hears it; a gravelly vibration along his spine and he nods, relaxes against the loose hug keeping him close. Ky feels himself let go, tension unfurling like new leaves on a pruned sapling, and he goes limp with relief. 

Sol, bless his perennially grumpy heart, doesn't ask, doesn't pry him for answers. He simply allows the younger man to lean in and curl a hand around a toned bicep and press his face in the crook of his neck. Ky is grateful for the respite from the storm in his head, thankful for the anchor to the present as he breathes in the scent of cigarette smoke and ash and fire and all things Sol that his mind can think up and then some. 

Eventually, the time passes, and Ky reluctantly pries himself away from the warm bubble of Sol's arms. He gets up, kisses Sol on the cheek in thanks, moves to close the balcony doors because Sol can't be arsed to enter through the door like a normal person, _would it kill you to use the spare key I gave you, Sol, I spent three dollars to have that duplicated for Pete's sake_. He doesn't wait for a response before he was moving on to the kitchen and fixing himself a sandwich (TLC, because he has no bacon and the rations are hard to come by _nonono this isn't the front lines stop it_ ). He eats in silence, skips the tea because he can't be bothered to put the kettle on, and goes to shower. Makes sure to take extra long in scrubbing himself clean (ten minutes instead of the usual three because water is also hell to ration _and Jesus Mary Joseph stopitstopitstopit_ ). Ignores the stare he gets when he returns to his bedroom for a change of clothes. Doesn't care that he's naked in front of an audience as he got dressed (it's nothing Sol hasn't seen before, zero shame in showing skin when barracks and close quarters don't exactly mean privacy _**STOP IT**_ ), picks up his house keys. All but stomps out of his apartment, not looking back.

(It's like running away, but it's worse because what he's running from is himself and there's no escaping that.)

The itch under his skin worsens once he was outside; blindly following the crowd means seeing the procession of colours (his colours _not anymore you're already dead_ ) and the flag flying and by the time he tries to pull away, the throng has inevitably pulled him towards St. Kiske's monument. He wants to laugh so hard that he cries; _Shrödinger's dilemma_ , a voice inside him says and it suspiciously sounds like Sol, _when you die and are brought back and you stare into the goddamn abyss and it stares back at you, where in the spectrum of fucked do you land?_ He has no clue, and all he can do is stare at that marble cross and rage inside his head; what's the use of praying to a saint (a saint he's been canonised and isn't that a huge irony) with bloodstained hands and a sullied heart and _fuck but it's his face he's been staring at every time he begs for divine guidance and that's just_

A flicker of flame lights up at his periphery. Candles? No, this doesn't seem like an offering made to the body buried more than six feet below and he tries hard not to think about it. Incense? Perhaps, if it smelled less like burning tobacco and ash and mint—

Sol.

He chooses to focus on Sol, all but fervently latching on to the thought of the older man like a sailor cast adrift to sea. Sol with his bad personality and gruff exterior and cold hands (odd for someone with a fire affinity but wasn't there an old saying about cold hands and warm hearts?). The scent of cigarette smoke clinging to him like a second skin, deeply intwined with the smell of leather, fire, and death. The gentleness in his eyes he cannot hide fully behind his aloof anger and deep-seated sadness. The understanding that of all of Sol's sins, his damnation is most certainly self-inflicted.

Ky breathes in, closing his eyes. The person beside him doesn't move an inch, a hands breadth of air between them (filled with two lifetimes' worth of baggage and pain that neither of them signed up for but Fate laughs at their lot and assigns them the shit cards because screw you and your simple desires nothing is free and nothing is simple). He shivers, bringing his arms up to wrap around himself and just when had day turned into night? How long had he been standing there?

Slowly, his world unravels.

Sol doesn't say a word when Ky's hand squeezes his arm just a tad too tight for comfort, doesn't offer comfort. Ky couldn't be more grateful. 

This will not be the last time he will face himself, but that's fine. He is never alone.

And by the grace of God, he never will be.


End file.
